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Industrial Property

Industrial property is part of
the wider body of law known as intellectual property. Intellectual

property
refers to the product emerging out of the intellectual labour of a human being.
So, in simple terms intellectual property refers to the creations of the human
mind. The importance of intellectual property was first recognized in the Paris
Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property in 1883 and the Berne
Convention for the protection of Literary and Artistic Works in 1886.

Intellectual property is divided
into two branches, namely industrial property and copyright.

Copyright

Copyright includes literary works
such as novels, poems and plays, films, musical works, artistic works such as
drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures and architectural designs.

Industrial property

Industrial Property includes
patent for inventions, trademarks, industrial designs and geographical
indications. The broad application of the term “industrial” is clearly set out
in the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property as
“Industrial property shall be understood in the broadest sense and shall apply
not only to industry and commerce proper, but likewise to agricultural and
extractive Understanding Industrial Property industries and to all manufactured
or natural products, for example, wines, grain, tobacco leaf, fruit, cattle,
minerals, mineral waters, beer, flowers, and flour.”

Industrial property can usefully
be divided into 2 main areas:

The first area can be
characterized as the protection of distinctive signs, in particular trademarks
(which distinguish the goods or services of one undertaking from those of other
undertakings) and geographical indications (which identify a good as
originating in a place where a given characteristic of the good is essentially
attributable to its geographical origin).

The other types of industrial
property are protected primarily to stimulate innovation, design and the
creation of technology. In this category fall inventions (protected by
patents), industrial designs and trade secrets.

So, industrial property includes
inventions (process, products and apparatus); Industrial designs (shapes and
ornamentation); and Marks and Trade-names to distinguish goods. Recently the
scope of industrial property has been expanded to include 'among others, the
protection of distinctive geographical indications, plant varieties, and the
layout designs (topographies) of integrated circuits, as well as the repression
of unfair competition, including the protection of trade secrets.'